Institutional Bottlenecks to Building Effective States: A Conversation on Public Sector Recruitment

Can you briefly describe your research project?

My research focuses on understanding a central paradox in the Indian bureaucracy: despite widespread political patronage, the state remains significantly understaffed. Through a mixed-methods approach, I analyse recruitment institutions in various states to determine why, even with strong political incentives, many government positions remain vacant.

The project aims to:

• Develop a taxonomy of recruitment procedures across states to determine the extent of understaffing over all position levels.
• By interviewing government officials, candidates, and legal actors, I examine how different stakeholders influence recruitment outcomes.
• I compile time-series data on recruitment and analyze litigation related to recruitment to understand institutional bottlenecks.

By contrasting merit-preserving and patronage-facilitating institutions, my research seeks to uncover the mechanisms that shape state capacity and contribute to broader theories of bureaucracy and development in India.

What inspired you to pursue this topic?

While working on government projects with various think tanks, one thing became clear — that individuals in government are key to improving development outcomes. So, naturally, during the PhD I wanted to pursue questions of selection, sorting and matching within the Indian bureaucracy. However, when I started collecting the data and speaking with politicians and bureaucrats — it seemed my original question was more advanced. The problem was one-step removed, that enough bureaucrats are not being recruited. This was even more striking because growing up in India, you always hear stories of ‘sifarish’ or patronage. A relative may have a friend in government, which could land them a job which is tenured, with houses, pensions and the whole shebang. So, the obvious question of understaffing is even more counter-intuitive.

My research so far has certain explanations to this but I’m still trying to find answers which aren’t endogenous. Isolating factors in a way that it is useful to bring about a change is what motivated me to pursue this question as a research topic during the PhD.

How does your project aim to address critical issues currently facing India, and what impact do you hope it will have? 

During my involvement in the committee deliberations of a state government tasked with revamping its recruitment institutions, I was struck by a significant gap in the existing academic literature: previous research offered little clarity on the practical roadmap or concrete answers to the challenges we faced. Recruitment in the public sector is a notoriously complex issue worldwide, and even when we attempt to simplify it—stripping away all nuance and political-economy complications to treat it purely as an engineering-like optimization problem—the solutions available remain unsatisfactory for both bureaucrats and politicians.

This realization has motivated my current research project, which aims to bridge this knowledge gap and provide the policy apparatus with more reasoned answers to these deeply complex problems. While the term ‘impact’ often carries lofty connotations, it is important to recognize that the effectiveness of any research project, including this one, will ultimately depend on the commitment of stakeholders to address these issues.

Through my interactions with bureaucrats and politicians across eight different Indian states, it has become clear that the urgency of reforming recruitment institutions is only increasing. I therefore hope that my work will lay a foundation for future thinking and institutional development within the Indian context, contributing to more informed and effective public sector recruitment practices.

How has the support from the Sunil Kumar and Sumati Murli Research Award made a difference in your research progress or methodology?

The support from the Sunil Kumar and Sumati Murli Research Award will be transformative for both the progress and methodology of my research on recruitment practices in the Indian bureaucracy.

The award will enable me to spend significant time conducting fieldwork across multiple cities—Vijayawada, Lucknow, and Allahabad. This extended presence will allow for deeper immersion. With the funding, I will be able to access crucial physical records and policy documents housed in government offices, which are not available digitally. This will enrich the empirical foundation of my study by allowing the compilation of unique datasets on recruitment outcomes and litigation.

The award made it possible to systematically compare recruitment models in contrasting states enabling a nuanced understanding of how administrative scale, technological adoption, and political stability affect recruitment. The award will help deepen relationships with state institutions.

What has surprised you most so far in your research journey? Perhaps early findings, community engagement, or institutional insights?

What has surprised me most is the paradoxical effect of reforms intended to promote fairness: in some cases, they end up undermining the very goal of building a capable and responsive state. The complexity of recruitment in India is not just a story of patronage versus merit, but of how well-intentioned institutional designs can create new challenges for state capacity and public service delivery. The attempt to insulate recruitment from political manipulation by making processes more rules-based has often led to unintended consequences. The heavy compliance burdens and rigid procedures meant to ensure fairness often slow down recruitment so much that vacancies persist, effectively reducing the size and capacity of the state.

However, the sheer scale of interest in government jobs has been striking. Millions of candidates prepare for a handful of positions, investing years in exam preparation, often with little return. This has profound implications for labor markets and individual livelihoods, as many candidates remain in limbo, neither securing government jobs nor building transferable skills for other sectors. Families and local communities deeply involved in the process. The social prestige and perceived security of government jobs drive collective efforts, but also create significant social pressure and, at times, disillusionment when recruitment is delayed or derailed.

Comparing different states, I’ve been surprised by how differences in administrative scale, technological adoption, and political stability shape recruitment outcomes. For instance, states with more advanced e-governance systems are not always more efficient if institutional inertia persists.

What lessons have you learned from working across borders and disciplines that you’ll carry into future research?

There are 2 big lessons from the initial work I have done so far. The biggest lesson is the value of local-knowledge. ‘Institutional peculiarities’ — as one Prof. of mine had mentioned — are extremely important to understand and imbibe. Being on ground and visiting field sites is the only way to develop these instincts. They can then inform statistical analyses that I end up doing. For any research on India, incorporating local expertise and in many ways, co-producing research agendas is a must.  

Second, methodologically, I have learnt the importance of flexibility in research design and openness to iterative problem-solving. Pursuing a research question with blinkers on is often not helpful — especially regarding a sensitive and complex topic such as public sector recruitment. Moreover, interdisciplinary methods foster robustness in findings that are true to the contextual reality. 

How do you see your project contributing to broader conversations about equity, governance, or health systems in India or globally?

This project directly addresses the paradoxes of equity in Indian bureaucratic recruitment. By mapping recruitment processes and identifying institutional bottlenecks, the research highlights gaps in equitable representation—across caste, gender, and socioeconomic lines—in public employment. Such insights are vital for ongoing debates about affirmative action, reservation policies, and the design of recruitment systems that balance merit with social justice.

 By revealing how institutional rigidity, litigation, and political intervention impact the timely filling of vacancies, the project provides actionable insights for improving state capacity and public service delivery. Addressing chronic vacancies in government roles can enhance the delivery of essential services, from education to law enforcement, thereby strengthening the social contract between the state and its citizens.

 By situating Indian recruitment practices within global theories of bureaucracy and development, the project bridges Western-centric models with the realities of large, diverse democracies. The empirical evidence generated supports nuanced policy debates on how to reform public sector recruitment for greater equity, efficiency, and resilience—both in India and globally.

What advice would you give other PhD students interested in international research collaborations, particularly in India?

For collaborations to be a success, I would say:

1. Prioritize local knowledge and cultural understanding: Approach collaborations as genuine partnerships. Value the insights and experience of local scholars and practitioners. Also, be mindful of institutional hierarchies, communication styles, and local norms.
2. Start early and expect a lot of hurdles: Navigating permissions, data access, and institutional protocols can be time-consuming. One has to be persistent and be ready to build and leverage networks. India, as Lant Pritchett had put it, is ‘deals-based’ not ‘rules-based’.

What’s next for your research—and how do you hope to stay engaged with Indian partners after this project ends?

Following the completion of this project, my immediate goal is to expand the comparative analysis of recruitment institutions to include additional Indian states with varying administrative structures and political dynamics. This will help refine the taxonomy of recruitment processes and deepen the understanding of how institutional variation shapes state capacity and public service delivery.  

I’m hoping my collaborations can enable a longitudinal study on recruitment. I am also hoping to get more access to study ongoing reforms—such as digital transformation and lateral entry in the bureaucracy— allowing the research to remain relevant to contemporary debates and policy needs.